What did I do to prep this week?

What did I do to prep this week?

By Bev Sandlin

First, I want to thank so many of our subscribers who took time out of their day to comment, give ideas and in general support SCP! Read more on the comments last Sunday and Tuesday. Thank You!

I applied for and am working on my paper work for becoming a “Short Call” substitute teacher. In Minnesota, if you have a Bachelor’s Degree in just about anything, and a school district is short on substitute teachers, you can apply to become a substitute teacher; so I am. A friend who has been doing this for several years calls it “glorified babysitting” at $95 a day—a 6 hour day.

This week I got my three car bags ready for winter. For me, these are not “get home” bags, rather winter survival bags. About the only reason I can see that a person would have to walk home is an EMP attack (Correct me if I’m wrong!) and that is not part of my preparedness thinking—a solar storm and we would have some fore warning. And I have “cheated”…

 

I don’t remember where I picked this up, perhaps Sears or Harbor Freight. But I’m sure it was under $25 and is fairly complete. I have these in the vehicles year around.

 

Inside the food and water one are emergency ration bars and foils of water. Yes, they freeze and yes they thaw—it’s Minnesota. I really like the handy little bags.

 

Inside of the first aid and anti-exposure pack are really basic first aid supplies, a flimsy plastic poncho and a one-time use survival blanket.

 

The Tools and Gear baggy actually impressed me! A handy little multi-tool, radio, flashlight, survival whistle, duct tape, cards, waterproof matches, and I think I slipped the box cutter in there. I left the radio and flashlight in their plastic both for protection and because the batteries are likely to last longer—so I am told. I put some of the matches and some baby aspirin into the survival whistle.

I added two things to this packet, a. A good plastic poncho, and b. A good survival blanket, because my life may depend on it. So the final package looks like this:

 

So, I have a survival blanket and now two ponchos, why more? Because one winter I was about 150 miles away from home and the thermostat went out—no heater. Below zero, no heater, wind chill at 60 mph… The cheap emergency blanket ripped and its only use was to help keep my head warm, and I cut one poncho up to wrap my feet inside the boots to keep them warm. It worked, but a good poncho over a good emergency blanket and the cheap one cut up and wrapped around my feet and head with a stocking cap and maybe I wouldn’t have broken that back molar grinding and chattering my teeth from the cold. And why do I live in MinnesOta?

And then I keep a little car tool kit in each vehicle year around. Not much, but better than nothing.

 

Again, I keep the batteries out of the flashlight. An extra poncho, an orange vest, more first aid and super basic tools—but I’m no mechanic, so this is okay for me. Along with the other tools, I think it is adequate.

I have pretty much always kept tools and extra fluids in my vehicles through the years and that behavior has saved my tail more than a few times!

When my home burned, all my preparedness supplies went too. So did my winter car bags. And of course I have no old coats, etc. anymore. The first winter after the fire I was just too shell shocked to think about winter car bags. I was living in the barn and in survival mode.

Well, this year I am in a house so things are easier. I ended up going down to Goodwill and Salvation Army and picking up some extra coats, boots, hats, gloves, scarves and some miscellaneous bags. To that I added socks and an old pair of sweat pants (Because sometimes I wear a skirt or dress, AND they make excellent snow pants over jeans.). I have a car and a truck, one clothing bag for each, and I packed Bob’s coveralls, etc. in a bag for his car.

 

 

So, the two bags on the lower left are in the vehicles all the time. And those are my bags of winter clothing. I think I would like to add some of those nifty emergency heater cans. The candles I did have melted in the summer time. Perhaps add some kitty litter (Scavenged that this summer for kitty.) for winter traction.

 

Okay Rourke’s Patriots, what did YOU do this week to prep?

 

 

*****

A smile for you…

A new monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying from copies, and not from the original books.

So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out that if there was an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies. The head monk says, “We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.”

So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours later, nobody has seen him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. He hears sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books crying. He asks what’s wrong.
“The word is ‘celebrate’,” says the old monk.

- AUTHOR UNKNOWN-

 

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